Oh, I guess it's time to start mawkishly proclaiming a "new normal"
by digby
This Ron Fournier piece is entitled "Why Boston Bombings Might Be Scarier Than 9/11". Seriously:
From the nation's founding, America has had two sharply delineated lives: one public and one private. The latter is meant to be safe and sacrosanct, part of what Thomas Jefferson called "the pursuit of Happiness." The public life is rowdy and partisan, even violent as reflected in the Civil War. "What happened in Boston," said Meg Mott, professor of politics at Marlboro College in Vermont, "is that the private life got blown up and hit deep in the heart of our bifurcated American lives. The lines were blurred, and that's scary."
They targeted life. They targeted liberty. Now somebody has attacked pursuit of happiness.
In those ugly months after 9/11, we feared there would be a “new normal” for America – that no place and nobody would feel safe again, that our churches, schools, malls as well as arenas and other places of great gathering would be killing fields. Those fears were not realized, not right away. Does the nightmare begin with Boston?
Today, officials identified the 8-year-old boy killed at the finish line. His name was Martin Richard. He left a world unworthy of him.
But the world is full of such horrors in this unworthy world, isn't it? Indeed, America's last horrifying act of violence was one in which over 20 little children like Martin Richard were gunned down, on purpose, in their first grade classrooms. Did we fall apart and declare that our "pursuit of happiness" is under siege and that this was an "attack on liberty?" Why not? What's the difference?
The difference is that we didn't call it "terrorism" isn't it, which apparently would have made it necessary to turn ourselves into hysterical basket cases mewling about Thomas Jefferson's dreams being destroyed because some "coward" targeted "life and liberty" and which is just well ... stupid and obvious. In fact, we have no idea why this madman targeted anyone. At this point, for all we know, he could have had a grudge against the City of Boston or hated marathon runners.
This is the lugubrious and mawkish commentary that gives opportunistic politicians permission to behave as if we've been attacked by martians instead of human beings and throw reason out the window. It's counter-productive to our ability to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to say the least.
These pants-wetters would do well to follow the edict of their hero Winston Churchill:
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